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I wrote a version of this post as the introduction to a research proposal that I’m putting together. Among other things I’m hoping that my research will show how, through curriculum redesign supported by innovative use of pedagogy and digital technologies, business-school education can be realigned with the changing needs of students and society. Anyway, I’m sharing it here as a way to record my thoughts and in case it’s useful to others.

We have built a weird, almost unimaginable design for MBA-level education. We then lay it upon well-proportioned young men and women, distorting them (when we are unlucky enough to succeed) into critters with lopsided brains, icy hearts, and shrunken souls. (Leavitt 1989, p. 39)

Since their inception, business schools’ curricula and the graduates they produce have been the subjects of heated debate. As the first business schools spread across the USA in the early 20th century, critics argued that subject coverage and teaching methods were at a vocational level and not grounded in research, leading to claims that they lacked academic credibility. In response, many schools began emphasising more quantitative, analytical approaches to education, and making greater use of statistical modelling and ‘rational planning’ approaches to strategy, thereby aligning themselves with more established faculties such as mathematics, economics and engineering.

These measures established business schools’ credibility and increased the demand for their provision for almost a century; however, by the early 21st century MBA curricula were being critiqued again for de-privileging many of the skills that contemporary managers needed in practice. These criticisms reached something of a crescendo when business-school graduates (and by extension the schools themselves) were seen by many to be complicit in the global financial crisis of 2008.

The literature on the perceived shortcomings of the MBA is now considerable in both breadth and depth, but consensus seems to be emerging around some of the capabilities that managers need but MBAs typically fail to deliver. These include leadership, self-awareness, change management, interpersonal and communication skills, innovation and creativity, and the ability to solve complex problems by integrating the disciplines. Moreover, there is some evidence that these missing capabilities are the very skills that are most likely to determine graduates’ future career success.

Perhaps even more seriously, there are accusations that business schools are failing to develop graduates who possess an understanding of the moral and ethical dimensions of business: critics say that many MBA graduates are detached, driven by self-interest, and lacking in both empathy and leadership skills. In particular, ethics, sustainability and social responsibility are seen as being either absent from MBA curricula or not meaningfully inscribed into practice. This situation has led to demands that business schools re-examine their curricula and the assumptions that underpin them, and even ask themselves why they exist at all.

Meanwhile, many business schools are seen as being too slow to embrace the complexities of digital technologies, both in terms of their implications for practice and in terms of how programmes are designed and delivered:

[Business] schools remain desperately slow to embrace the digital world. Strong brands have enabled them to escape the implications of this, but they are likely to be found out as online courses become ever-more accepted and sophisticated. (Crainer 2015, p. 48).

Almost three decades on, Leavitt’s plaintive cry about lopsided brains, icy hearts and shrunken souls still seems to echo – unheard – through business schools. However, for schools that are perhaps smaller and more agile, there seems to be an opportunity to reposition themselves ahead of more established institutions that have been slower to embrace change.

Here are some of the questions that business schools might wish to consider as they think about their curricula, and particularly how they approach their online programmes:

What processes are required so that a dialogue can be established between schools’ curricula and the needs of students and businesses over the long term?

What academic, technical and administrative infrastructure is required in order to support online education that aligns with these needs while operating on a global scale?

How can business schools leverage the potential of global communities of online learners to meet educational goals, develop highly skilled graduates and inform future curriculum development?

How do business schools assess students in ways that are appropriate to complex and ever-changing learning outcomes, while operating at scale and protecting assessment validity?

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of the MBA appear to be greatly exaggerated. But do business schools need to shift at least some of their emphasis (and their resources) from the MBA to other qualifications, such as hyper-specialist MScs or micro-credentialing for business?

Bibliography

I’ve removed most of the citations to avoid interrupting the flow too much here, but some of the main works that informed this post are:

I took my children to see it last month and we all adored it. Last night we took my husband and he loved it too; we had said beforehand that he was at risk of being excluded from the family if he didn’t but luckily it all turned out ok.

The soundtrack has been in my car and head for the last month and reminded me once again of the power of music, drama and the arts to inspire, teach and enlighten.

In a month where the arts are fighting to survive in schools and society, the need for us to shout about this power is never greater:

I know that the historical accuracy of the story is highly blurred by dramatic licence. I am sure that the actual Mr P.T. Barnum was not quite the poster-boy for inclusion and the flag-bearer for vulnerable minorities that the story makes him out to be (just google him). But in this story, he is in an incredibly well-drawn character; passionate; principled; strong; weak; flawed; wrong and right.

Every song in the film is a hit and I have been thinking about how I could use each one as a teaching tool; either with staff as part of CPD, or pupils, in PSE or an assembly, or both.

Message: Even when life is tough, imagination and dreams can help us find solutions and set us free. Barnum as a child is abused, neglected and orphaned but he has big dreams and forms alternative secure attachments that help him though. There is hope for children who suffer early trauma.

Message: Be prepared to take risks in order to achieve your potential and find fulfillment. Don’t stay with what is safe and known. (This is a good one for me just now as I try to persuade some staff and pupils to take risks.)

Message: No matter how much we have, it can feel as if it is never enough. In the film, we see that this is true at times for both Jenny Lind and Barnum. It has certainly been a theme in my life. Interestingly, we discover that Jenny was born out of wedlock and has clearly spent her life looking for something to replace a missing bond; in the film, she seems unable to find a way of healing her internal hurt child and to find a love that might help heal that.

Message: Life is never straightforward but it is the most wonderful adventure; to make the most of it we need to acknowledge that it has ups and downs, that we need to take risks but that we also need a stable hand to hold.

Message: We can learn from our past mistakes, see what is important and choose to live by our true values and with love. Right now.

I saw the sun begin to dim

And felt that winter wind

Blow cold

A man learns who is there for him

When the glitter fades and the walls won’t hold

Cause from then, rubble

What remains

Can only be what’s true

If all was lost

There’s more I gained

Cause it led me back

To you.

So there it is.

In writing this, I have listened again to all the songs again and I have found lyrics and subtleties that could make me start all over again. I am inspired, moved and amazed all over again.

I know that not everyone likes a musical. That some will find it cheesy. But if not, why not embrace this incredible opportunity to help you develop a culture that celebrates love, life, creativity, diversity, vulnerability and the immeasurable power of the arts?

As many will know I’ve been running an after-school computing club (@CoderRoyston) in Royston Primary now since April 2013 and we’ve been a CoderDojo site since October 2014). Each club lasts a school term and I’m now in my 22nd term of club. Mostly with one club per week but during 13/14 & 14/15 sometimes two or three clubs per week with between 8-12 kids per club. Some kids will stay for just a term, others dip in and out of terms and some stay. In 2016 3 of the longest attending kids were presented with raspberry pi’s from CoderDojo Scotland for their dedicated attendance over 3 years and sadly only left as they were moving onto secondary school.

2 of our 3 longest attenders getting their Pi

Over that time the kids have entered competitions, had visits from Maureen McKenna director of Education for Glasgow, Elizabeth from HMI who wrote up a cool good practise report on our wee club & a party of educators from Denmark!! They’ve also been out presenting to primary teachers interested in computing and to the local housing association showing what they’ve been getting up to during their time at the club, as well as getting to the Scottish KoduKup finals twice.

Keeping busy

Overall, I’m proud to be involved with this wee school that I call my second home and proud to be part of the Royston family – bear in mind my youngest child left the school 2 years ago now. But once part of the family then that’s it, my kids were at the school from 2004 until 2016 and I’ve been involved in a lot of things parent wise and volunteer wise. Since 2010 I’ve been doing computing of various sorts related to my research and finally started the computing clubs in April 2013 and haven’t looked back. I haven’t given them up because even though I’ve no kids there now I know all the kids there and feel like well while I can give back I should.

Just some of the things we’ve done at club

So why am I writing this post, well this term has seen a Big change to the club. The school is being refurbished and now don’t have an ICT room which technically should have meant the end of computing club BUT no I couldn’t see that happen. Sooo thinking hats on and well pretty easy we have done some unplugged activities – doing pixel art, learning some magic tricks that teach computing concepts and planning a Minecraft build. We are lucky enough to have Raspberry Pi’s though and that’s the route we are going to be taking with the club. Our next session will be hooking up a multiplayer Minecraft session and working in pairs to create the ideal school that was planned out at a previous session. Yes it’s disappointing to lose the room but time to think outside that ICT room box and ensure the kids still get to enjoy club for many more terms to come.

I have a scheme of work that I teach to first years in Drama that I have been teaching since 1994.

It is called Cuddington Manor and the idea, about a haunted house and young person who goes there to try and solve a mystery, was given to me a colleague; I took it and developed it in my early years of teaching in London. For a while most of the ideas were in my head.

Once I became head of department, I had to write a detailed scheme of work and lesson plans for a couple of colleagues who were science teachers but teaching some drama for me.

The scheme has travelled with me through four schools and never failed me. Pupils throughout the UK have loved it and I have loved teaching it to them.

I have refined and added to it over the years, learning from successes and less successful lessons, creating PowerPoints (which weren’t part of our teaching toolkit back in the day), adding learning intentions and success criteria and matching against Curriculum for Excellence Experiences and Outcomes and Benchmarks.

I don’t do the bit where I turn all the lights off and light a candle any more as I know the janitors would have a collective heart attack.

And I have had to do some research into whether Lords and Ladies of the manor are quite the same in Scotland as England; but then of course there was Monarch of the Glen which re-assured me.

And this year I have made a connection between the work we do on suspense and the murder-mystery genre with Death in Paradise, the hit BBC TV series.

But here’s the thing. I am still pretty much teaching the same thing in the same way as I was nearly 25 years ago, because it works. It works because I teach every lesson with fresh eyes and a passion, confidence and energy that makes the content new and interesting to every child who experiences it. And because I get those motivating, stage-fright anticipatory nerves before every single lesson, no matter how familiar the content.

Let’s not waste paint on walls that don’t need re-decorating (to borrow an image from @therealdavidcameron)

Let’s not re-invent wheels when they still run smoothly and take passengers to where they need to go.

I am just back from a run. It was not very fast and it was not very far and I really did not want to do it. I wanted to stay in my jammies and eat square sausage rolls with my husband and kids.

I am not a glamorous runner. I do not glide along on slender, tanned limbs, gazelle-like, smooth ponytail swishing behind me. I do not glow. I sweat. I chunter along. I go bright red. I swear a fair bit. Especially going up hills. So I wasn’t exactly pumped about doing it, but I did it anyway and it was my first proper run in ages.

I did not have a watch. I did not set myself any speed or distance targets. I just started moving. I stopped when I got tired and then I started again. After a while, I found a wee rhythm and I knew my body was taking over. My breathing settled into a pattern of its own, in, in, out, out, my feet and legs moving in time.

The sun was shining and the sky was deep blue and I as I ran my heart swelled up with a feeling of total gratitude and thankfulness that I was here. Healthy, breathing and moving on this day, at this time, in this place. Sweaty, out of breath, looking a pure state, but here. What a privilege.

That’s what running can do for me. It simples everything down to in, in, out, out, in, in, out, out. I don’t need to be anything except me. I don’t have to answer to anyone except myself.

Running connects me to my body. It helps me appreciate the amazing things it can do for me if I just give it a chance. Instead of the depressing attention to cellulite and extra pounds, I can be glad and proud that I have a body that can run at all. I can notice what is good and strong.

When you strip away all the nonsense about how far and how fast and how many calories, running becomes about time and space to just move. To be inside your body and be thankful for it. To notice how lucky you really are.

Running has ripped my heart out more than once. When you strip everything back to in, in, out, out, you find out what’s really going on inside your own head. You find out what your self-talk is doing. If I find I am berating myself for walking before I get to that lamppost or cursing myself for stopping on this hill, I know I am not in a good place. Discovering I am being unkind to myself is never easy to deal with, but it is always better to know.

I ran once on a cold and grey Saturday morning, unremarkable in every way until my chest exploded with pure, white-hot grief that had been locked in tight until that exact moment. The force of it brought me to my knees and I sobbed at the side of the road until I was totally spent.

Running locates me in my own body and forces me to appreciate what’s good about it. Running helps me work out if I am ok or what I need to do next to be ok. It opens me up to creativity. It makes me a lightening rod for good, crazy, exciting and stupid ideas. I am too busy dealing with in, in, out, out to filter, so all the ideas and emotions get through. Unfiltered ideas and emotions are often the most powerful. It is time and space to be who I really am. Not a mum or a wife or a teacher or anybody’s anything. Just me, in my body, moving.

I don’t know if running does any of that stuff for you, but I really hope something does.

And I hope you do that something today, right now, on this sunny Sunday.

I want you to give me a hard time. No really. Go for it. Read some of my blog posts and then give it to me straight. Tell me what you really think. I am giving you full permission to be honest with me. Be critical. Please.

Being critical is too often seen as a negative. Harsh. Uncalled for. Blunt. Hashtag Ouch.

But, you know what, I’d take it any day over the alternative.

Because nothing amazing ever happens when you are nice.

Our indoctrination towards nice begins in childhood; ‘be nice to your sister’ ‘play nicely with the Lego.’ In Britain, we prize being nice over being honest. We let people push in front of us in queues and we accept bad haircuts and we don’t make a fuss when our cheese toasties arrive on white bread instead of brown.

Being nice is not the same as being kind. Kindness is pure, undistilled magic and a tiny drop of it can spark whole miracles. Niceness is just cheap window dressing. It’s what I punt out front so you don’t see what’s really going on inside. It is saccharine- sweet empty space. It means nothing.

Niceness has long since seeped into our online communication too. Take the humble text message as an example- what a great invention. The point of a text message is to ask something or tell something. Quick, easy, straight to the point. Usually routine communication with people you already know. ‘Can you get milk on the way home?’ ‘Be there in 10 minutes.’ But that is not enough. I have to also be nice. I have to add a kiss or a smiley face to my text message. So that you know I am nice. A world of pain and paranoia can open up for the text receiver if the previously established kiss or smiley face is inexplicably missing; what does it mean? Have I done something wrong? Why is she not being nice to me? Otherwise rational adults go into mini meltdown mode because of a missing emoji. I know this because it has happened to me. I have been that paranoid, panicky text receiver.

And do not even get me started on LOL.

Professional niceness is even worse. I watched your lesson today and I really didn’t think it was very good. But I won’t tell you that. Because that wouldn’t be nice. Instead, I’ll mutter something about the children being very polite and then I’ll hightail it out of there before I have to get honest with you. I will tell you that your lesson plan sounds great even if I think it doesn’t. Even if I think I could suggest ways to improve it. Because being nice matters more than being honest.

But there is another way.

Accept that criticality is what makes change happen. You telling me what you really think is what will make me think. I might not like what you tell me, I might choose to disagree or discard your feedback, but it is 100% guaranteed to make me think. And that is the bit that matters. Because when you look at what I do with a critical eye, it makes me do the same. And that will lead to change.

Being critical does not mean being a jerk. You don’t need to be rude or aggressive or judgemental. You don’t have to try to make me do it your way. Shaming people achieves nothing but shame. But if you are honest and you are respectful and you say to me ‘Look, here’s my opinion on what you did…’ Well, I need to be big enough to take it. I need to swallow that lump in my throat and curb my initial response to cry and/or punch you in the head for not instantly telling me how amazing I am. And that can be hard. But I will manage it because I will understand you are talking to me in the spirit of helping me get better at what I do. I will understand that being critical is way harder than being nice and that you probably have a lump in your throat too. I will take a deep breath and I will listen to you and say thank you and then I’ll step through whatever door your honest criticism has opened for me.

So here’s my idea- let’s sack off all the nice and get real. I’ll be straight with you and you be straight with me, ok? If I watch you teach or you read my writing or we disagree about something, let’s assume we are both big enough to handle the subsequent critical feedback. We won’t be jerks about it, but we won’t be nice about it either.

And we won’t feel the need to smother every communication in a thick layer of nice. We’ll just say what we need to say, safe in the knowledge that you are no less my pal because I forgot to LOL at your last message. And I promise you won’t ever need a text kiss to know that I love you.

You and I will know that being critical is actually being kind. We will not be nice, because nice means nothing, but instead we will be critical and we will be kind. Telling me what you really think is a tremendous act of kindness. It is a leap of faith. Honest, critical feedback is a gift, the most precious gift you can give. And I will thank you for it.

Today has been a very strange day. I was lucky enough to go to Glasgow to attend the first training in Scotland for school leaders by Paul Dix from Pivotal Education. Paul was as expected; inspiring informative and very entertaining.

But I will talk about that another time. This post is about communication.

In our school we encourage pupils not to use their mobile phones during the day and where possible not to contact their parents unless absolutely necessary. There have been situations where pupils have sent a text, for example, that has caused concern to a parent and led them to phone in, only to discover that perhaps the wrong end of the stick has been got.

There are many times, however, when mobiles can be very useful, such as when we are on a school trip and the bus is due to arrive back early. A quick call home by pupils when we are half an hour away can avoid them having to stand around in a cold car park for half an hour.
Similarly, if a pupil has forgotten PE kit / inhaler/packed lunch, a quick text home can result in the parent dropping it off at reception with no fuss, instead of the pupil having to take 15 minutes out of class to go to the school office and ask them to make a call home etc, etc.

Most pupils use their phones very responsibly during the school day.

Imagine, then, how I felt when I checked my phone during a brief break this morning to see the following message from my daughter, who is also a pupil at my school:

The school’s on fire!!!!!

A hundred reactions and thoughts went through my head, including:
A massive panic about my children, our children, my colleagues.
“Someone has her phone and it is a joke”.
“I am not there so who has the high-vis jacket and is registering staff?”
“It CAN’T be a drill as prelims are on….”

After some messaging back and forth, I established that it was a real fire but that everyone was safe and soon after that school was being evacuated and pupils sent home.

I sent a message to my colleagues but did not call the school: I knew 100% that they would be fully engaged in managing the critical incident and that the last thing they would need would be me tying up their time or phone lines.

And soon emails, tweets and messages appeared from school to re-assure parents.

And I was re-assured.

Driving home tonight I reflected on how many text messages must get sent nowadays in the moments before real tragedies and how they must render loved-ones completely distraught.

Modern communication is fantastic and yet it can also lead us to over- or mis-communicate at times.

Tonight I will put my phone down and give my two a big hug instead.

I know as teenagers they might resist…. but it will tell them everything they need to know.

If you have read my previous posts, you will know that I am fairly single-minded about my vision; to help every young person in my care to be happy, healthy and doing the best they can. If I see that children are being deprived of the opportunity to thrive I will fight tooth and nail to put it right.

I want the world to be fair, safe and full of opportunity for every single child and so when things get in the way of that, I get angry and sad.

In school, we do the absolute best we can with the resources we have to support our children.

But we also need to know that they experience a life that is fair, safe and full of opportunity when they are outside of our environment.

We know that this will not be the case if they are out drinking alcohol from a young age.

We know that this will not be the case if they are taking drugs.

We know that this will not be the case if they are engaging in inappropriate sexual activity.

We know that this will not be the case if they do not have clear boundaries.

If we as parents cannot define the safe boundaries for our children then we need to ask for help.

There is no shame in this. We end up in this parenting role with very little preparation and if we are lucky enough to have had good role models in our families, then we probably do a good enough job.

But if we are struggling to get it right, we need to be honest and say so.

As a school leader, I don’t want parents to feel that they need to struggle alone. I need them to be honest and work with me so that we can create the environment both in and out of school that will allow our children to thrive.

It takes a village to raise a child. But we will only raise that child well if the adults in the village are honest, willing to work together and able to ask for help when they need it.

I was deeply saddened today to hear of the death of Ursula K Le Guin. Despite being an avid reader as a kid, for some strange reason I never came across any of Le Guin’s books. I have no idea why but it’s something I still regret. It was actually my current partner who introduced me to LeGuin in my mid thirties. During a very wet holiday in Sleat on the Isle of Skye he read The Wizard of Earth Sea to me. I was entranced, and read all six books of the series back to back. Having grown up in the Western Isles, the archipelago of Earthsea, and the rocky island of Gont in particular, was instantly familiar. The Outer Hebrides with dragons! What’s not to like?

It’s hard to pick a favourite from the series, but if I had to, it would be Tehanu, because it is so rare to find a work of transformative fiction told from the perspective of a middle aged woman. And it’s not just the perspective of one single woman, women’s experience of the world, of child hood, adulthood, birth and death is absolutely central to the whole mythos of Earthsea.

It was only after reading the Earthsea series two or three times that I moved on to Le Guin’s science fiction. I never got much further than The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness, because they raised so many questions and gave me so much to think about and to process.

When I read the news of Le Guin’s death on twitter this morning, it was The Dispossessed I picked up to read in remembrance, but it’s this quote from the end of The Farthest Shore that’s been with me all day.